1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a control management system for controlling electrical devices, and more particularly, to a control management system capable of transmitting keyboard/mouse data and receiving video/audio driving command to/from an electrical device via a wireless communication interface.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A keyboard-video-mouse (KVM) switch has been developed as an important solution of multi-users, remote access and management for a network interconnecting a large number of console devices and a large number of computers thereto. A KVM extender enables a computer interface to be located at a greater distance from the computer than is typically possible with a standard interface. For example, a company can place all its employees' computers in a rack-mounted system in a locked room and yet still provide a standard KVM interface at each employee's desk. To the employee, it appears as though the computer is still located at the employee's desk. This centralization of computers enables companies to maintain tighter security over their computers and also simplifies the computers' maintenance by locating them, in a single place.
The KVM switch may be accessible over a LAN via a common protocol, such as a transfer control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP). Generally, a user or system administrator can access the remote computers attached to the KVM switch utilizing an Internet browser or client software associated with the KVM switch, Once the remote computer has been selected, the remote computer's video signal is routed to workstation's video monitor of the user and a user may then utilize a keyboard and/or mouse to control the remote computer. The KVM switch may additionally include a connection to the power source of the remote computer for a hard reboot in case of a system failure. With a KVM switch, the user can access multiple computers with a single interface, thus reducing the cost of components and maintenance.
Traditionally, the keyboard, video, mouse data are transmitted and received between the KVM switch and the computers by respective cables. Also, these cables connect the computers and the keyboard-video-mouse switch through respective terminals, i.e. the video connectors (commonly, D-sub 15 pins VGA connectors), the mouse connectors and the keyboard connectors (commonly, PS/2 or Universal serial bus (USB) connectors). Once the number of the computers connected to the keyboard-video-mouse switch is more and more increased, these sets of keyboard-video-mouse cables correspondingly occupy a lot of space between the keyboard-video-mouse switch and the connected computers. Especially, the occupying space of many cables grows up for a racked, clustered computers or servers due to the less space for the setup of these computers. Meanwhile, the large number of cables required by the number of the connected computers dose not only occupy lots of spaces but also cause the bad radiation of the KVM switch, the computers and the cables themselves.
Please refer to FIG. 1, which illustrates a system of using a keyboard-video-mouse switch and a keyboard-video-mouse extender to transmit the keyboard/mouse data and receiving the video/audio data stream to/from the computer 300 and 302 with respective cables. The keyboard-video-mouse switch 30 is connected with a first workstation which contains a keyboard 32, a mouse 34 and a display 36. The display 36 is coupled to the keyboard-video-mouse switch 30 for receiving the video signals to show operation information for users. For example in a big rack, clustered computers are setup to be connected to a keyboard-video-mouse switch 30 for being remote accessed. Three cables 38 are necessary for coupling each computer to a keyboard-video-mouse switch. If twenty computers are setup, there will be sixty cables crowed in the whole rack. Additionally, the KVM switch 30 also accommodates a second workstation that may be relatively far from the KVM switch 30, for example 400 feet away. The second workstation includes a keyboard 42, a mouse 44, and a display 46. In order to accommodate the relative distance between the second workstation and the KVM switch 30, a KVM extender 40 between the second workstation and the KVM switch 30 is required. The KVM extender 40 is coupled to the KVM switch 30 via a long line 48. The line 48 may be, preferably, a CAT5 cable, or an optic fiber cable.
Furthermore, the size of the keyboard-video-mouse switch can be diminished with such idea because the number of circuitry devices inside for transceiving the keyboard-video-mouse data over single protocol standard through one single cables must less than the one for traditional designs. For instance, one set of switch devices including three selecting circuit devices for outputting/inputting keyboard, video and mouse data respectively can be replaced by one single selecting circuit devices because keyboard-video-mouse data are transmitted over single protocol standard in one single cable. Therefore, the occupation space of the keyboard-video-mouse switch also can be minified.
Consequentially, there is a need to develop a keyboard-video-mouse switch capable of wirelessly transmitting keyboard/mouse data and receiving video driving command to/from a computer. Such a system should allow a user to view all available remote computers via an on-screen user interface and to choose one of these computers to monitor and control. The system should aid in managing remote computing environments, thereby reducing the need to have an on-site system administrator.